


and maybe there's nothing to hide

by bluecanary101



Category: Zeroes Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: 5+1 Things, AT FUCKING ALL, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, but its 6+1 bc im incapable of brevity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecanary101/pseuds/bluecanary101
Summary: Six conversations Nate and Ethan have in the middle of the night, and one time they finally talk during the day like functional adults.
Relationships: Ethan "Scam" Cooper/Nate "Bellwether" Saldana
Comments: 22
Kudos: 10





	1. 11:04pm, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park

Nate crawled into his sleeping bag as soon as everyone departed for their own tents with the intent to pass out as soon as possible. He couldn’t explain to himself why he was so tired. They found Thibault in one piece, his team was whole again, and tomorrow they would be on their way to New Orleans. This was a win. At the very least he should feel a sense of accomplishment, anticipation for the next step of his plan, something. But try as he might, he couldn’t convince himself to feel anything other than exhausted.

Thibault was…Nate didn’t want to think about Thibault. If he thought about him too much he’d spiral into self-doubt, and he didn’t need that. He needed to sleep. Recharge and then face the music in the morning.

But he couldn’t even do that.

Ethan was to blame, because of course he was. His usual restlessness ratcheted up to eleven at night. He shifted positions at least once a minute and fidgeted the rest of the time. Constant taps and rustles and the occasional _snick_ of nylon against plastic. Even his attention was distracting, jumping at every noise and flickering over Nate conspicuously. It was like trying to fall asleep next to a sparking car engine.

Nate _could_ use his power to force his attention still, he had a curve for it, but there wasn’t anything in the tent to tie Ethan’s focus on except Nate himself, which was very off the table. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to ignore him.

_Snick, snick._

“Ethan!”

“What?”

“Stop moving.”

“I can’t fucking help it.”

 _Maybe it would help if you focused on just one thing for more than three seconds,_ Nate thought venomously. Probably wouldn’t go well if he requested that out loud. “Go to sleep.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“Fuck off.”

Nate resisted the urge to growl like a dog. He really, _desperately_ needed to get some rest. Instead of responding he eased Ethan’s angry attention off him and screwed his eyes shut.

The peace lasted another five minutes, until Ethan sat up abruptly and muttered, “Fuck this,” seemingly to the ether based on where his frazzled attention lines were landing.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

Nate was suddenly wide awake, and he wasn’t totally sure why. He propped himself up on his elbows. “What? _No_.” The words came out oddly strangled, and Ethan’s attention snapped to him, more surprised than chastised. Nate backtracked. “I mean, why? Where are you going?”

“Kelsie and Chizara are probably going to start up soon, and I don’t feel like dealing with their shit tonight.” Nate frowned. The consensus among the group seemed to be that Kelsie broadcasting her relationship status every night wasn’t weird if they didn’t make it weird. Leave it to Ethan to make it weird. But Nate also couldn’t find any way to argue the point, so he didn’t protest anymore. There was some shuffling as Ethan extracted himself from his sleeping bag and fumbled with a jacket. “I’ll probably just head out to the picnic tables, that should be far enough out of range. And I guess I should check on the car too, make sure Chizara doesn’t accidentally crash it again.

 _Again?_ Nate thought dismally, flashing back to the reports about the oil tanker. He decided that he didn’t want to ask. He really should, he needed to know how in control Chizara was, but he was too tired. Tomorrow, maybe, if the other things on his to-do list went over smoothly.

Nate laid back again and kept his eyes fixed resolutely on the tent above him, but he could still sense Ethan’s attention lingered over everything he passed, sticky and awkward. “See ya,” he murmured, like he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate, then slipped out into the night. Nate listened to his footfalls until he couldn’t hear them, and then tracked his attention flitting through the trees for a few seconds longer until that also disappeared out of range.

He yawned. Maybe he could actually fall asleep now.

A few moments later a swirling wash of warmth swept over the camp, right on time. Usually Nate didn’t mind it, but tonight it felt hollow. Somehow distinctly wrong in the emptiness. It didn’t make him feel connected, it made him feel off. Invasive, although he couldn’t exactly tell who was invading on what.

Maybe Ethan had just ruined it.

Nate rolled onto his side.

He could still sense everyone else's attention lines bouncing around in their own tents. Chizara and Kelsie's were locked tightly onto each other and Nate resolutely did not think about why that could be. Flicker's was shimmering over the vague shape of Thibault. Thibault… was spiraling. Attention curled inward and clearly miserable. Nate’s hand twitched, wanting to reach out to nothing.

Somehow, he felt simultaneously too close and miles away from them.

He turned onto his other side, putting the rest of the camp to his back. It achieved nothing. His power didn’t depend on sight, it was a whole other sense entirely, and it didn’t have an off switch. Until very recently he never had reason to want one.

_Don’t think about that._

As tired as he was, sleep wasn’t coming easy.

There was no reason to feel uneasy but it crept up on him anyway, like Kelsie’s power, easing its way into his brain until it was all he could feel and he couldn’t even figure out why. Except he knew why, he just didn’t want to admit it to himself.

At some point he had curled into a fetal position without his own conscious input, and he was disgusted enough with himself that he went back to lying flat on his back.

He was trying not to think about it, but it was impossible to stop once he started, so instead he tried to reason with himself. This wasn't anything like prison. Back there, there were no connections, no recognition, just lonely souls reaching out and finding nothing to hold on to. The only person who wasn't connected to anyone now was Nate, and he clung to the distinction like a lifeline even though it made the cavern in his chest even deeper.

It wasn’t the same. It _wasn’t_.

But it was similar enough.

“You have bigger things to worry about, get a grip,” he murmured into the silence. Then winced, had he really fallen so far that he was talking to himself?

He made himself lay there for roughly five more minutes, hoping the need for sleep would overtake the need for… something. Didn’t work. Then he made himself sit up slowly, put shoes and a jacket on carefully, leave the tent like a normal person.

Ethan was easy to find, a kerosene lamp glowing like a beacon through the trees and his attention on his phone even brighter. He was so caught up in it that he didn’t notice Nate approaching until a twig snapped under his foot.

“Shit,” Ethan hissed, jumping and dropping the phone onto the table with a clatter. Then he fumbled it when he tried to snatch it back up, ended up dropping it again, and had to dive under the table to retrieve it. The whole performance would have been funny if Nate was awake enough to care. As it was he just sat down and yawned.

“It’s just me,” Nate said once he popped up again, trying for placating but ending up sounding slightly miffed.

“Yeah, fuck, I can see that.” Ethan’s voice was about an octave higher than usual, and he shoved his phone into his pocket with more force than strictly necessary. “Wha- uh, what are you doing here?”

Suspicious, but Nate chose to ignore it. When _wasn’t_ Ethan being vaguely suspicious? “You had the right idea, it got really weird back at camp,” he said nonchalantly.

“Oh, right.” Ethan scratched at the wood grains on the table as he spoke. “Like, it’s weird enough when Kelsie and Chizara do it, but now that there are two couples that can’t keep it in their pa-”

 _Nope._ “Let’s not talk about other people’s sex lives.”

Ethan chuckled awkwardly, then shifted in his seat like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. One day he was going to have to learn how to control his body language. He was fidgeting and avoided eye contact, attention kept looping from Nate to the phone in his pocket and back again, tinged with guilt.

It occurred to Nate, reluctantly, that he might need to start caring about how twitchy Ethan was being. He didn’t want to. For the first time in his life, he was faced with something he’d rather not get involved with. But the more Ethan fidgeted the harder it was to ignore. 

“Okay,” Nate sighed. “Who were you texting?”

Attention snapped on him so quickly that he knew he had hit the mark. “No one, I was looking up directions to the nearest gas station, we’re going to need to fill up soon,” Ethan lied. And a good lie too, which meant the voice.

“Who were you texting, Scam?” Nate repeated.

Ethan froze. He might have even stopped breathing.

Okay, so it was going to be one of _those_ lies. Nate reviewed his options and picked the one that would take the least effort. “I’m not mad,” he said. And he really wasn’t, he was too tired to get angry about anything. “We’d already be screwed if you were double crossing us, so I know it’s not that. I just want to know who.” There was also the fact that Ethan had been weird about his phone since the jailbreak, so whatever it was, Flicker probably already knew. Would have been nice of her to tell him, but it was a busy few days. He trusted her abilities enough in this regard.

He felt distinctly like he was trying to calm a startled horse. Without a curve it was hard to do anything, but he tried to project calm understanding. The seconds ticked by and Ethan just sat there, frozen, like this was Jurassic Park and if he didn’t move Nate wouldn’t be able to see him.

“Was it Jess?” he prompted.

“No.” Ethan audibly swallowed, which was reassuring. If he were using the voice he’d sound more confident. “Sonia.”

Nate wordlessly held his hand out, and Ethan unlocked the phone and handed it over without a struggle. Some brief scrolling confirmed that he was indeed just talking with a girl, most recently about a show that he missed watching. He gave the phone back with a flippant, “Alright,” and an overwhelming desire to drop the conversation.

“Alright?” Ethan repeated, incredulous.

“That’s what I just said.”

“Well, I don’t know, I expected you to go ballistic if you ever found out.”

“I don’t blame you for-” _for trying to keep a friend._ Nate cut that train of thought off. “I just don’t care.” God, he probably should care, shouldn’t he? “Like I said, if Sonia was going to snitch, we would all be in prison by now. Just be careful, it probably won’t be a problem.” And at that point he was just arguing his own case to himself, so he shut up.

“I’m not giving away our location or anything. I’m not a complete idiot.”

Nate chose not to comment on that. He propped his head on his hand and stared past Ethan into the shadowy trees. “There’s a 50/50 chance that Flicker already knows, but try not to bring attention to it anyway. She’s still touchy about Lily.” Of course, he was massively underselling Flicker’s observational skills, but Ethan didn’t know that.

“Trust me, I’m the master of sneaking things past Flicker at this point.”

Nate snorted behind his hand. Sneaking things past the girl whose power is surveillance, right, sure.

“Speaking of Flicker,” Ethan lowered his voice, “do you think that Thibault’s going to be, like,” even softer, “okay?”

The hand resting on the table twitched slightly. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

“I mean,” Ethan gestured back at the camp.

Unbidden, the image of Thibault when they first found him flashed through Nate’s mind. Gaunt and hazy like a ghost haunting the forest. He didn’t want to talk about this, especially not with Ethan. Especially not _now_. But it was his responsibility to keep everyone hopeful. “He always bounced back before. The rest of you couldn’t remember him for years, this is just a minor relapse.”

Even to himself it rang hollow, and Ethan’s attention soured even more. “He seems really messed up.”

Nate absently ran a hand over his hair. Any way he cut it, Ethan was right, Thibault was never this bad, at least not in Nate’s memory. It didn’t even look like he ate while he was gone, who knew if he was sick or lucid or _anything_. Even with a tracker there was a chance that he couldn’t recover from this.

All the thoughts he was trying to suppress the entire evening came flooding in. If Nate was this frazzled just because he was stuck in solitary for a few months, what did that mean for Thibault? And the fact that he disconnected himself from the world on purpose, went to the extremes that he did, was almost too horrifying to imagine. Nate couldn’t fathom…

Except he could. That was the problem.

Nothing was four cell walls and thinking he could fade enough that he could slip right through them and _stop thinking about it._

He slammed his hand down hard enough that Ethan jolted. Took a breath. Reminded himself firmly of his goals. “It’ll be fine, I have a plan.”

“A plan to fix him?”

“Well, not exactly.” Nate hesitated, he was planning to bring this up in the morning, but maybe Ethan could be a practice run. “I’m thinking that we should go to New Orleans. There are other zeroes there, probably other people like him,” _like us_ , “maybe they can help us.”

“Yeah, _evil_ zeroes.”

“We don’t know they’re evil. And they probably won’t turn us in the second they see us, unlike pretty much everyone else in the world. At least with them we have a chance.”

“I don’t know, it sounds sketchy.”

“We don’t exactly have a lot of options. As we are, we’re isolated and stuck at the bottom of the food chain. I’d rather take a risk and be a part of something than die on the run, wouldn’t you?”

There was a pregnant pause. Ethan’s attention was steady on him, for once completely focused, and Nate almost thought he was about to say something useful. But then his phone buzzed in his pocket. He jumped at the noise and his attention scattered like sand, guilty and erratic. 

Ethan took it out and looked up at Nate like he was asking permission. “Go ahead, I really don’t care,” Nate said. Even though he still thought he probably should. He could examine why he didn’t later, put it on the to-do list right below investigating Chizara’s post-Christmas track record and making sure Thibault didn’t disappear on them again.

Sheepishness radiated off Ethan in Kelsie-like waves as he checked his texts. At least he managed to keep ahold of it this time. They sat in relative silence for a few moments. Relative, because Ethan’s haptic keyboard settings were up very high, and every tap buzzed like a siren in the night.

Just when Nate thought the conversation was over, Ethan sighed heavily and said, “Sometimes I think she’s trying to flirt with me, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

Nate pried his eyes open. When had he closed them? “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Hey, I have game!”

“Are you sure it’s not just the voice’s game?”

“Well, yeah, mostly. But I can’t use the voice over text, so _ha_. And you’ve never even had a girlfriend, so I’m obviously better off than you.”

Was he being insulted? He was probably being insulted. Luckily, Nate had years of experience dodging questions from his aunts about his nonexistent love life. “I was focused on more important things, never had time for any of that.”

"Yeah, you were always very _focused_ ,” Ethan said, in the way that made it clear he meant something else. Then he frowned again and added, "And, uh, I know I probably fucked up your chances with Flicker. Sorry 'bout that."

Nate huffed a laugh before he could stop himself. "I never had a chance with her to begin with, you didn’t really affect anything.”

"Ouch.”

“It’s old news.” They both fell into silence again as Ethan texted and Nate tried not to watch him texting. For some reason he felt like there was something else he should say. 

Well, there was that _one_ thing. This didn’t seem like a good time, he was too tired to word it right. But he was also too tired to stop himself.

“I never really apologized for what happened.”

Ethan didn’t look at him, but suddenly all his attention was on Nate. “Yeah you did.”

“That wasn’t good enough. It didn’t fix anything.” Attention sharpened, coiled around Nate like a snake. It wouldn’t do much with just the two of them, but he tugged weakly at it anyway, trying to put as much weight behind his words as possible. “I’m sorry. For everything. I know I was a prick, it was my fault.”

Ethan blinked owlishly down at his phone. “You already made it up to me by saving my ass so many times,” he said. When Nate didn’t respond, he met his eyes for the first time since he sat down and gave him a tiny, lopsided grin. “I’m serious. We’re good.”

It seemed too simple. He didn’t want to hand-wave this away like he did last time, the wound would just keep festering. But Ethan seemed genuinely unbothered.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, at least not when the horse was giving him a reprieve from an awkward conversation in the middle of the night, Nate allowed himself to accept it.

“Okay.”

Silence reigned again, but it wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. Nate drifted. Ethan’s attention lines kept flickering over everything like a fly buzzing around, and he kept shifting and fidgeting and tapping at his noisy phone, but it wasn’t as annoying anymore. The little sounds and distractions that Ethan seemed to be incapable of not producing consolidated into almost-pleasant white noise. Probably because Nate was officially too tired to worry about them anymore, but hey, whatever worked. He cushioned his head into his arms.

A second later, Ethan was shaking his shoulder and telling him to wake up. He made a noise that could have conceivably been “what?” but didn’t really sound like it.

“It’s been, like, an hour, they’ve probably stopped.” A glance at the Nate’s phone confirmed that this was a true, but he swore he only closed his eyes for three seconds.

“Fuck, I don’t wanna move.”

Ethan laughed, too loud for Nate’s taste, but surprisingly genuine. “Damn, I think that’s the first English curse I’ve heard you say in years.” Nate groaned in response. “Come on, you big baby.”

Nate was the kind of tired where he felt like he was lagging behind his body when he moved, but he dragged himself to his feet and followed Ethan back to camp anyway. A part of him was chastising himself for being such a mess. The rest of him was too tired to care. Told himself that he’d be back to normal in the morning.

He would be fine in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im gonna be real with yall, idk if i have the attention span to finish this, but an attempt will be made. like comment and subscribe, and lmk if theres any typos or formatting weirdness bc we all know im illiterate


	2. 9:58pm, Room 510

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here, take my garbage. i dont really like this chapter, but i cant cut it bc its necessary for nexus retconning purposes. be warned, i basically put the last chapter of nexus thru a shredder. believe me when i say i was restraining myself in that department (discorders will know the Salt). if that bothers u, dont worry, it doesn't come up too much in the rest of the fic, but also youre reading scamwether so idk what to tell u, u knew what u were getting into. bone apple teeth my guys.

At the end of it all, the FBI stuck them in a hotel for the night.

Nate was shocked they got that much. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that he would spend another night in a cell. Kelsie’s radiating good will probably had something to do with it, even after the FBI agents pulled her off the throne there was something distinctly off with the world. What exactly that meant in the long term was anyone’s guess. They were all carted off separately once the FBI got their shit together, and Nate’s string of interrogators and guards were annoyingly tight lipped about how things were going outside.

It felt like he fell through a wormhole and got kicked back two months in time. Except this time the stakes were somehow even higher.

Interrogations were particularly awful this time around, because with Verity as Kelsie’s co-ruler he _couldn’t_ _lie_. It was cold comfort that the FBI agents questioning him had no choice but believe him as the entire story of the past few months came pouring out.

Everything. Davey, Swarm, Piper. Things he wouldn’t admit out loud if his life depended on it. Things he didn’t even know he felt.

Somehow, even after a testimonial that Nate could only describe as batshit, they let him and the rest of the zeroes off easy. Cynthia Rodriguez agreed to keep representing him when he called her, even though she sounded harrowed by the thought. She also said she’d consider taking on the other zeroes as clients, pending talks with their legal guardians. They weren’t even being charged with anything, at least not until the FBI figured out what they were doing with Piper’s army. Whether actions taken in defense of the state was grounds for a pardon for the zeroes’ other crimes was up in the air.

In summary, the next few months were going to be legal hell on every possible level. But at least he probably wouldn’t spend them in a prison cell. Not that the hotel room wasn’t just a glorified one, but Nate considered himself an expert on imprisonment at this point, and this was by far the nicest prison he was ever tossed in. He would take his 2-star hotel with grace.

His escort stopped at the end of the hallway and observed, unnervingly quiet, as Nate went into room 510. He’d be playing guard dog, then. Lovely. As if Nate was going to make a break for it this late in the game.

Ethan was already there, sitting on one of the beds and scribbling madly in a spiral notebook. Four others were stacked next to him.

One of the few bits of information Nate was given during his stay with the FBI were updates on Ethan’s condition. For about an hour after the machine was activated, he was nowhere to be found, and there was a serious concern that he was dead. But no, they found him alive and well in a café ten minutes away, hanging out with Sonia like they hadn’t just averted a global cataclysm. Nate wished he could say he was surprised.

They said that he was overloaded, a fairly common side effect of the machine that would wear off in a day or two with no long-lasting health defects, except a muddled memory of the time he spent affected. It had varying symptoms for different powers. Ethan became omniscient, mute, and very confused. But he was one of the lucky ones. There were overloaded kids who were borderline comatose, sightcasters watching the world from every set of eyes in the world, one unfortunate maker who couldn’t move through the pain.

At this point Nate was prepared to believe anything anyone told them about powers. This might as well be something that could happen. He was prepared for a slightly weirder than usual Ethan.

He was not prepared for _this_.

Ethan’s attention was like nothing Nate had ever seen before. It spiked out erratically, shooting through walls at things too distant for Nate to see and retreating just as quickly. They said he’d be weird, they didn’t say he’d be marginally inhuman.

Just looking at him was giving Nate a headache. He froze at the door, caught out and unsure if it was wise to approach. Somehow Ethan was still capable of perceiving what was going on around him even with his completely bugfucked attention, because he gave Nate a placid smile and a wave, like this was all completely normal. The thread connecting them was solid and steady. Steadier than usual even for a normal person, and wildly unusual for Ethan.

Weird. Very weird. Nate didn't know how he could still be surprised by anything after the day he had, but here he was, being surprised.

"Hey," Nate said, approaching slowly. He felt like he was talking to someone dying on a hospital bed. "How are you feeling?"

Ethan scribbled some more and handed his notebook over. The majority of the page was filled with illegible chicken scratch, but the last line read _I’m not dying_ in slightly neater handwriting.

“Did you just-?” Nate tried to ask, but when he looked up Ethan was already nodding. They blinked at each other for a few seconds, Ethan still with that serene smile. “Okay, that’s going to take some getting used to.”

Ethan made grabby hands for the notebook, and Nate handed it over only to get it back three seconds later with another message.

 _not technically mind reading, I just know what you’re thinking_ , he wrote.

“That’s literally mind reading.”

He waved the comment away and went back to writing moon runes.

Okay then. Nate sat gingerly on the unoccupied bed. This was shaking up to be the weirdest conversation of his life, he might as well get comfortable. “Are the others on their way?”

_Flicker and Tee are still being questioned, and they stuck Kelsie and Chizara in holding cells_

“ _What_? Where?”

An address and contact information for the warden were shoved into his hand.

A few angry phone calls later, Nate slammed the hotel room phone back on the receiver with disgust. “Rodriguez is working on it,” he announced, then immediately remembered he didn’t have to, Ethan probably already knew. He probably also knew that Kelsie and Chizara were being held because they _murdered people_ during the parade fight, a fact which Nate had only just been made aware of, and which he was still trying to process fully. “Anything else I need to know?”

 _nothing immediately helpful,_ said the note he was passed. Nate frowned at it.

“Don’t you know everything now?”

Ethan nodded. _it’s spotty, not all my info about the future will be reliable because outcomes keep changing. and I don’t know anything about myself for some reason_

“You can see into the future,” Nate said flatly. It wasn’t a question, and if Nate had any less self-control it would have come out despairing.

Ethan pointed at _outcomes keep changing_ again. Nate was about to press him more, but he scribbled something and shoved the notebook in his face before he could. _you won’t feel better even if I told you_

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Ethan tapped at his head, and Nate glared at him.

“All the knowledge in the world, and there’s literally nothing useful you can tell me?” he pressed, forcing himself to remain calm. It wasn’t really fair to get angry with Ethan about this. He was technically sick right now. A type of sick that gave him godlike powers, but still.

A nonchalant shrug was the only response he got. He was making it incredibly difficult to feel sorry for him.

“Okay,” Nate gritted out, “what is Phan doing right now?”

_sleeping_

Of course he was, because God forbid he be useful at any point. “What did they do with Piper's army?”

_they stuck most of them in those power insulated cells_

Nate figured they would, but he didn’t know how to feel now that he had the confirmation. Best not to think about it. He squeezed his eyes shut as if it would help chase away the thoughts, and when he opened them Ethan was giving him a look that was too knowing for his tastes. Better change the subject. “Wait, who was that guy on the third throne? I’ve never seen him before.”

_he’s not that important honestly_

“Ethan,” Nate said slowly, like he was explaining something to a child, “he briefly ruled the world.”

_I said what I said_

“I can’t help but wonder if you’re giving me unhelpful answers on purpose.”

Ethan made a vague handwave gesture that could mean anything.

“Was the thing that Piper told me about our powers true?”

He cocked his head. _dunno, it involves me. but it sounds fake._

“Why is that a limit to your power? How does that even make sense?” A bit of his frustration broke though in his voice here, but he felt justified in that. This whole thing was stupid. Nate was talking to a demigod and getting _nothing_ out of it.

Another shrug.

Nate took a deep breath, trying to re-center himself. He was being too transparent about his frustration, but the guy could read his mind, so all bets were off at this point. “What are you writing?”

Ethan flipped to the first page of the notebook, when his writing was still somewhat neat.

_Verity doesn’t like me but it’s nothing personal, she’s just worried about piper and I remind her of the time she got overloaded. dont mention the time she got overloaded. bad memories._

_Lauren Hall is going to convince her parents to get a rottweiler, but a really cute nice one. She’ll name him Scooter. He’s a really good boy._

_Red Scepter 4 comes out next year. The dev will add bards. Fuck yeah._

“This is all-” before Nate could finish, his gaze landed on one line in particular.

_To Nate: it isn’t useless, you’re just boring_

Nate resolutely did not toss the notebook at Ethan’s face. “How is this going to help you down the line? You have so much power and you’re not using it.”

A complicated expression came across Ethan’s face, and his insane attention calmed down as he wrote. _I don’t like that this is happening, I’ll probably like it even less when I get my head on straight. So I want to remember the parts of this that aren’t so bad._

“What do you mean you don’t like it?”

_it’s personal_

Nate only barely stopped himself from laughing, or scoffing, or whatever hysterical noise was trying to rise up out of him. “You do realize that nothing is ever going to be the same again, right? Piper’s plan didn’t work, but we’re still walking into a new world order. I would like to be prepared for that, and it would really help if you would put your powers to good use.”

_there is literally nothing you can do about anything right at this minute. chill the fuck out_

“There has to be something!"

Ethan aggressively underlined _there is literally nothing you can do_

Nate stood up abruptly before he realized he was doing it. “I’m done sitting around in cold storage and waiting for people to make my decisions for me,” he snapped. Ethan’s attention sharpened and Nate knew instinctually that he was seeing something Nate didn’t want him to see. “And stop _fucking_ reading my mind.”

There was a beat where Ethan just blinked at him, and Nate wanted so badly to chop that too sharp attention away. Then he raised his hands up in surrender and went back to writing like it was nothing.

Fine. The conversation wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Nate started pacing around. Like a caged tiger, except tigers had the luxury of not understanding politics or the news cycle or the American legal system.

More than anything, he wanted to leave. This was a horribly guarded cell, nothing was stopping him from flipping and walking right past the guard. Real fucking funny that the only prison he could break out of on his own was also the only place it would behoove him to stay in. Hilarious.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t as fine with the hotel room thing as he thought he was.

He forced himself to go to the window instead of the door.

When he left the FBI headquarters he was surprised that it was so dark already. Hard to keep track of time in there. What must have been at least six hours collapsed into amorphous nothing, time periods distinguished only by whether he was being questioned or waiting somewhere to be questioned.

He wondered how the Piper's other followers were doing, locked away in cells they built themselves. Realized too late that he was still considering himself one of them and cut train of thought off. Tried to focus on the city in front of him instead.

For all that he knew the world had changed, it looked the exact same. New Orleans was still bustling, subdued now that it was on semi-lockdown, but still alive and moving. Like today meant nothing. It was hard to believe the world down there was even real, or that there was anything beyond the city streets he could see.

Hard to believe he was prepared to break this entire world down just 12 hours ago.

He wanted to leave _so much_ , but he didn’t know what he’d do. Where he’d go. Home, he supposed, but he didn't know how he could his family after all this. He didn’t call them when he had the opportunity at the FBI headquarters, left it up to Rodriguez to update them. He was too guilty. And also, probably, a bad son.

There was a phone right across the room, he could call. He stared at it for what felt like a long time.

But he wouldn’t.

Instead his gaze caught on Ethan, looking completely unbothered in the face of Nate’s crisis. Maybe he didn’t have to. At least not yet.

“How is my family doing?” It felt like the question came from someone else, but it was his voice saying the words.

Ethan gave him that annoying knowing smile again. Like he was waiting for Nate to ask this entire time. He was not going to miss this creepy overloaded Ethan. That wasn’t going to stop him from using him as an information vending machine, though.

He started writing on a new page, and then tore it out and handed it over when he was done. _Your mom and dad are really worried, but they trust Rodriquez to take care of you. Gabby isn’t worried at all, she’s just glad that you’ll probably come home soon. Adriana is a little mad at you for making your parents sad and messing up stuff at home, things might be a little awkward with her for a few months, and Alejandra doesn’t know what to think because your parents don’t want to tell her much about anything. But they’re okay. They’ll be happy when you get back._

Well shit. Nate blinked rapidly, hoping that Ethan couldn't tell he was on the verge of tears. “Thanks,” he said stiffly, folding the paper so he could keep it in his pocket.

There was more writing on the back, scrawled right where it would show after Nate folded it. _also_ _kelsie’s here_

“What?”

Kelsie practically ripped the door off its hinges as she came in and Nate almost honest to god screamed. She was smiling way too big, eyes way too bright. If Ethan’s attention was headache inducing, Kelsie’s was just downright unsettling. Unfocused and hazy like she was pumped full of morphine. The wave of good feelings she brought with her was powerful, but there was an undertone to it. Something that made Nate want to recoil.

She was rubbing her hands together like she was trying to wash them.

“Hi!” she chirped.

It took a second for Nate to gather himself enough to respond. “Uh, hey. Rodriguez said that-”

Kelsie cut him off, accompanied by a forceful wave of _happyfinegood_ ** _fine_**. “Yeah, it’s fine now!”

“But-” he tried, but he got cut off again by an even more intense tsunami of her power that physically forced him back a step. It was like she was trying to drown out the world with it.

“Don’t worry about it!” she said brightly, forcefully. She finally seemed to notice that she was wringing her hands and for a few seconds she just stared at them, like she was seeing them for the first time. The mood in the room took a hard dive and then a head spinning turn back up. “I’m going to go take a shower!” she announced.

As soon as the bathroom door closed her power just shut off completely.

Ethan and Nate exchanged identical looks of alarm. “Do I want to know?” Nate asked lowly, careful that Kelsie couldn’t hear.

The vigorous head shake was to be expected.

Well, Nate did know it wouldn’t be over. He just wasn’t expecting the conflict to continue in the form of something _very wrong_ with Kelsie.

Seemed he had more to worry about than the zeroes’ legal situation.

He sat back down and found himself wishing for his mission files. It was really a shame that they were probably locked away in an FBI archive, an organizational tool would be helpful right about now. As soon as he had the thought, Ethan tossed one of his notebooks and a pen at him. “Oh, thanks,” Nate said. “But seriously, stop reading my mind.” There was a note on the inside cover, in Ethan’s terrible scrawl. _then don’t keep stalker notes on us this time around_

“They weren’t,” Nate began. Ethan met his gaze with a single raised eyebrow. “Okay, fine. Mind your own business.”

 _no promises_ , said the last note Ethan passed him.


	3. 2:45am, The Moonstruck Diner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u churchenbells for being my personal reference robot bc i still dont own the first book. also, fair warning, the nexus epilogue is still in the shredder

Ironically, Nate didn’t realize how bad his _thing_ with being alone was until long after he got home.

For a while he was just too busy. There were court proceeding to attend, journalists to field, _school_ to worry about. Still being expected to care about AP Statistics after everything was borderline offensive, but he was going to graduate on time no matter what his abysmal AP Statistics homework grade said. And that was all on top of corralling the disaster that was the zeroes. Kelsie had calmed down once they got back to Cambria, but there were still days when a lurking wrongness still tainted her power and she had to lock herself in a room to calm down. Chizara was just as bad, she was just being Chizara about it. All tight lipped and repressed. And the other three weren’t exactly paragons of balanced emotions either.

But they were managing. That would have to be good enough for now.

Busy days meant he wasn’t left to his own devices very often, and he was stuck at home when he was. He filled the empty space with attempts to make amends to his parents and sisters. To an outside party it probably looked like he was being overzealous, but volunteering to help his mom in the garden or taking Gabby to her soccer games was just killing two birds with one stone.

Things were still awkward at home. Everything he did was a step towards fixing it, if only a small one.

There was so much to do, so many things that needed taking care of on every front, that he didn’t have time for much introspection. Which was how the fucking Thing snuck up on him again.

The only time he couldn’t find anything to do was at night. Late night planning while he tried to fall asleep turned into full blown worrying which morphed into a familiar buzzing anxiety. During New Orleans he thought it was his power starving for a curve, and maybe it still was. Maybe crowds were so hardwired into him that going too long without one messed knocked some screws loose.

It was too quiet in his room, too empty. This house that he had grown up in most of his life suddenly felt like a trap. The silence made his chest tight and he was _certain_ if he stayed too long these walls would close in on him and this time he’d never get out, no one would ever come for him, he’d be trapped in this oppressive nothing forever. He had to leave. Had to get out and find someone. _Anyone_.

He knew he was being irrational, which just made him angry at himself on top of it all. So he’d lay in bed for hours, twitchy and angry and yearning for something that wasn’t there, until eventually he’d blink and it would be morning again.

After two months of being home he was forced to admit the Thing wasn’t getting any better. In fact, it was steadily getting worse.

Nothing helped. TV didn’t work, the people on the screen didn’t feel real if he couldn’t see their attention lines. Focusing on his family’s fading attention through the walls just set him off more. Working was okay. It mostly kept his mind off Things until he was worn out enough to pass out, but he never felt rested in the morning when he was supposed to do more work.

It got bad enough that one day Flicker took him aside and told him, point blank, that he needed to get more sleep or she was benching him. As if they could afford that, at this point. Nate appreciated that she was stepping up, but in the moment it pissed him off a little.

But he could admit to himself, if not anyone else, that there was a problem. His subconscious wouldn’t shut up no matter what he did, and it was affecting his performance.

There was nothing to do except leave and try to find a crowd.

He was very aware this was a terrible idea. For a lot of reasons, foremost among them was that if his parents caught him it would set their relationship back months. They never said anything, probably wouldn’t, but they got twitchy when he went out on his own sometimes. And Nate couldn’t blame them, he wouldn’t trust himself either. He’d trust himself even less if he knew he was sneaking out at least twice a week.

So he felt awful for leaving, but he couldn’t stay. He could _try_ , he’d just be miserable and panicky the entire night. And even then, nine times out of ten he caved in at some point anyway.

It was pathetic, he knew it was.

Knowing that never stopped him, and he hated himself that much more for it.

He kept half a metaphorical eye on the outer wall of his parent’s bedroom to make sure the noise of the car didn’t wake them up. Not a flicker. He was momentarily disappointed, and then it curdled into more self-disgust. Because he didn’t want them to wake up and see him stealing away like a criminal again, but at least that way they’d _be_ there. That was all he wanted.

But they were worried about him enough. The more normal he acted the quicker their concern would dissipate and they could all move on. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

On nights like these he had a circuit of 24-7 diners that he bounced between until he was tired enough to ignore the emptiness. Sometimes as he drove down Ivy Street he was tempted to see if he could make himself enjoy dancing again, but he was self-aware enough to know that was also an even more terrible idea.

Nate was full of those these days.

First up tonight was The Moonstruck Diner. The coffee was bad and the crowd inside was always small and disjointed, but it served its purpose. Most of the customers came here fresh from the clubs, but there were generally a few loners like him. One chronically exhausted looking waitress and two more cooks in the back.

And today, Ethan.

They saw each other as soon as Nate walked in, and they both froze like they had caught each other in something illegal. “What the hell are you doing here?” Ethan asked after a tense moment, forkful of pancakes raised halfway to his mouth.

Nate summoned up an easy grin and strode over to Ethan’s booth. “Kelsie mentioned a new club that looks a lot like The Dish on a higher budget, she thinks they modeled it after us. So I went to check it out, and then I got hungry.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, Kelsie did tell him about a possible Dish clone. He had no intentions to visit it, but Ethan wouldn’t know that.

The fork fell back down to the plate and Ethan just stared at him some more. Long enough to get uncomfortable.

“Bullshit,” he said eventually, like he was making an official declaration.

“Excuse me?”

“Bullshit,” he repeated, “You were following me, weren’t you?”

Nate squinted in confusion. “Why would I be following you?”

“I don’t fucking know. I never know what the hell you and Flicker get up to.” Ethan didn’t sound angry, just resigned, which made even less sense. He slumped back in the booth with a huff. “I thought you stopped doing this shit after New Orleans.”

Yeah, Nate had no clue what he was talking about. “Doing _what_? And what does Flicker have to do with anything?”

“You two have _obviously_ been following the rest of us. We’re not idiots, did you think we wouldn’t notice?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nate insisted.

“Then why are you here?”

Half a dozen ways to back up his original lie and a handful of new ones all sprung into his head at the same time. But for some reason he couldn’t make himself say anything. Something about the muted, tired glare Ethan was giving him tripped him up.

He didn’t want to lie, bizarrely. But he also couldn’t tell Ethan the truth because the truth was _stupid_.

Nate realized too late that he was taking far too long to respond. “I just couldn’t sleep. I took a drive and ended up here. It was a coincidence, that’s it.” That was probably an acceptable middle ground. Not the whole truth, but the bulk of it.

Ethan frowned at him, dragging the pancakes around in the syrup absently. Then, “You’re not lying.”

“No.” Nate all the power he could scrape up from the scattered crowd behind it.

Ethan frowned harder and tapped his fork against his plate. “Well, now I feel like a dick.” _You aren’t._ “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” _I wouldn’t trust myself either_.

“No, I shouldn’t be so fucking paranoid about you anymore, after everything.”

“I get it.” Nate got it so much that it was physically painful.

They were saved from a never-ending spiral by the waitress’s timely arrival. She stood in front of the table and stared at Nate blankly until he ordered his usual terrible coffee.

Awkward silence descended. Surprisingly, Ethan offered the first olive branch. “Caffeine this early in the morning?” he asked.

He beat down his impulse to point out that Ethan put enough syrup on his pancakes to give him jitters for the next three hours. “I’m not getting any sleep tonight anyway.”

“Fair.” He finally started eating again.

“What do you mean about Flicker keeping tabs on you?” Nate asked.

“It’s not, like, a thing. I don’t think. Like I said, I’m paranoid, and it’s been a weird day,” Ethan said around a mouthful of pancakes. When it seemed like that was all he was going to say on the matter Nate tugged on his attention until he swallowed and kept going. “Y’know how she and Thibault got into that huge fight last week?”

Nate nodded. “Because she thinks he has commitment issues, and he thinks she’s being overbearing. I got the play-by-play from Flicker already.” His official stance was that he was on Flicker’s side in spirit, completely neutral in practice, and in private he wished they’d both get over themselves.

“It’s more than that, dude. She wants to know where he is, like, _all the time_.”

“He did disappear into the woods for two months.”

“Yeah, I know, I was there. But she can get really weird about it. I mean, _I’m_ worried about him disappearing again, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m blowing up his phone all the time asking where he is.”

“He’s not your boyfriend.”

“The fact that they’re dating makes it weirder, dude.”

It struck Nate that he actually didn’t care to fight Flicker’s battles for her, at least not at this time of night, so he raised his hands in surrender and steered the conversation back on course. “Is that the only reason you were suspicious of her?”

“Well, yeah, mostly. But there was also the yoga thing.”

“The yoga thing,” Nate repeated flatly. Ethan looked appropriately embarrassed.

“Kelsie caught her lurking around this park that she does yoga in sometimes, and she scampered off without saying hi or anything. Just once, but it was during the time that Tee was getting annoyed with her, so we were all suspicious.” Ethan hesitated, eyes fixed on his pancakes but attention all on Nate. “And when Flicker’s up to something it usually leads back to you.”

“I don’t control her, she does what she wants.”

“Yeah, well what she wants tends to be a little creepy.”

“I’m sure she isn’t doing it with malicious intent.”

“You can say that because she’s never creeped on you.” Ethan looked guilty as soon as the words left his mouth.

The waitress must have been replaced by Nate’s personal guardian angel that night, because she chose that moment to bring Nate his coffee, giving him an opportunity to gather his thoughts. A memory resurfaced as he was carefully measuring out two spoonfuls of sugar. “Wait, was it the park downtown?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?”

Nate sighed. “Flicker used to go there to people watch when she needed to calm down. She could never tell her family why she liked it so much, or why she always wanted to be alone, so eventually she stopped doing it. I guess she’s started again now that they know about her powers.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll talk to Kelsie and Flicker in the morning. I can’t do anything about her and Thibault, but I can fix the other thing.”

“I mean, I could just text Kelsie.”

“No, I don’t want this to fester any more than it obviously has.”

Ethan shrugged and went back to his food. “Guess in retrospect it was a pretty flimsy theory.”

Nate agreed, but he was already exhausted enough by the entire conversation that he didn’t even care to say it out loud. He took a long gulp of coffee as he fished for safer conversation topics. “So why are you out here?”

“Like I said, weird day.”

“Vague.”

For a moment Ethan just pushed his pancakes around in the syrup some more. “Okay, you’re not allowed to laugh at me for this,” he said to his plate.

“I won’t.”

“I’m serious.”

Nate took a bland sip in response.

“Okay.” Ethan grimaced, like he was steeling himself for something. “Sonia and I broke up today.”

 _Well shit_. Out of all of Nate’s friends, Sonia and Ethan’s relationship was the least insane. This did not bode well for everyone else. Nate put on his best concerned friend face even though all he wanted to do was bang his head on the table. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s chill. Things got off to a weird start with the whole,” he made a vague sweeping gesture with his fork, “ _everything_. We mutually agreed it’s a terrible time to start a relationship.”

Well, they were being more mature about it than Flicker and Thibault, which was about all Nate could ask for. He filed this under the “low risk” category of problems he was balancing.

“I’m here because this is the place where I saw Kelsie for the first time.” Nate didn’t know what to do with that, and luckily Ethan picked up the conversational slack before he could come up with anything. “And I’m not here because I still have a thing for her or anything,” he rushed to say, “it’s just that this is kind of where everything started. Or, like, where the good stuff started. The stuff that didn’t try to kill me.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s just comforting, in a weird way. Dunno why, you’d think I would avoid it, but here we are.” He took a glum bite of pancakes. “The food isn’t even that good.”

Nate raised his garbage coffee in assent.

“I guess that,” Ethan started, trailed off, then shook his head roughly. “Never mind.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Philosophical bullshit, don’t worry about it.”

It occurred to Nate that Ethan probably wouldn’t tell him even if he pressed him more. They weren’t really friends, Nate had no leverage here. Utilizing the weak but existent curve would run the risk of Ethan picking up on it and pulling away. And whatever he was going to say probably wasn’t even that important.

But he wanted Ethan to tell him anyway. He wanted Ethan’s trust. Wanted _people_ to trust him again. Maybe they never really did, it was all just his power tricking them. That had never bothered him before, and he wasn’t sure why it suddenly was. It was probably just the fact that Nate was feeling generally horrible.

He still wanted to try.

So he did something he never thought he’d do in front of Ethan. He switched off his power.

It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as when he did this for Chizara the year before. Prison and flipping and Piper had taught him control, enough where he could ease off his armor gradually. Ethan didn’t even seem to notice, back to eating his pancakes like they were laced with cyanide. Which was fine. Better, probably, if Ethan didn’t know exactly what was happening.

Even in such an intensely casual setting like The Moonstruck, the lack of attention insurance set him on edge. He couldn’t tell if low stakes made it better or worse.

“We’re at a diner at 2am, this is the perfect time for philosophical bullshit,” Nate said. Without his power behind them the words came out awkward and stilted.

Ethan furrowed his brows and for a moment Nate was sure he was about to tell him drop it. But Ethan drew in a breath and said, “Nothing is really better. I mean, it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? We’re supposed to go through hard shit and become better people. But I’m not. I don’t think any of us really are. Tee’s still disappearing, Chizara still gets hurt by everything, her and Kelsie _both_ ,” he broke off again and shook his head. He didn’t need to elaborate. “Kinda seems like we’re all worse off now than when we started.”

Well, he hadn’t been expecting this experiment to go this bad this quickly. Guilt and uncertainty threatened to drown him almost immediately. Opening himself up for this when he was already off kilter was obviously a mistake, but it was too late now. He gripped his coffee mug tightly with both hands in an attempt to steady himself. “Yeah, well, there are pros and cons.”

“Sure, some good stuff came out of it, I guess. But it was such a fucking mixed bag.” Ethan raked his hair back. It was getting almost as long as it was before the summer incident, although styled differently and with weird looking frosted tips from the bleach job. Nate didn’t know why he was focusing on this, but it didn’t make him so intensely miserable, so he kept doing it. “I mean, do _you_ think that it’s getting any better?”

 _No_. Nate had never let himself think it before, but the answer was no. Maybe they weren’t so great before either, and maybe that was his fault. But he couldn’t say they were in a good place right now.

He had failed them every step of the way and he couldn’t even bring himself to apologize for it. Couldn’t make himself do anything but sit and stew in his shame.

Across from him Ethan looked just as miserable as Nate felt. He dropped his fork like he was disgusted with it and sighed deeply. “Hell, maybe I’m just projecting.”

Something about the sadness in his voice forced Nate back into himself a bit. “No, you’re right. Everything is a mess. _Everyone_ is a mess.” _I’m probably the worst of us all._

Ethan didn’t look convinced, but he managed a strained grin. “I guess you’re not as much of a dick anymore, so there’s that.”

Even such weak praise automatically made him feel better. It was humiliating. If this was how non-charismatic people felt all the time then no wonder they were so easy to control. “Thanks,” he managed.

Ethan nodded. His attention caught on what was left of his pancakes again, but he just ended up pushing them away.

If he were still a real leader, he’d find something comforting to say. But after another too-long pause all he could come up with was, “Maybe it’s too early to take measurements right now. We’re not out of the woods yet, we still might all go to jail if Rodriguez’s self-defense argument doesn’t work.”

Ethan shifted uncomfortably. “Love the optimism.”

“It’s true. We’re not even close to done yet.”

“So, what are you saying? Just wait and see what happens?”

Is that what he meant? He supposed it was. If it made Ethan feel better, then it was. “Yeah. Until everything calms down, at least. I’m sure things will look better by then.

“Yeah, I’ll drink to that.” Ethan raised his water glass, and Nate tapped his coffee mug against it halfheartedly. It was a fairly weak, worthless success, but a success nonetheless. “Wanna talk about something less depressing now?” Ethan asked.

Nate laughed a little. “Gladly. Since when does Kelsie do yoga?”

“Oh, like, last week. It’s supposed to be relaxing, centers her or whatever. It’s good that she found something that calms her down, but now she keeps bothering me and Thibault to try it.” Nate’s face must have done something in response to that, because Ethan laughed and said, “Yeah, I know.”

After that they talked about mostly nothing. More relationship gossip. How Ethan and Sonia might try dating again in a few months, but in the meantime, she wanted to focus on her upcoming finals. AP Statistics. Stupid low stakes stuff.

It was surprisingly nice.

And _Christ_ that was embarrassing, but not having to worry about anything more important than AP tests and girlfriends felt better than Nate thought it should. Nate was in no position to argue with himself here, so he sat there and let himself enjoy it for as long as it lasted.


End file.
